Taiwan tapioca tea on tap in Palo Alto, Mountain View

Lydia Lee

Published 4:00 am, Friday, August 23, 2002

It's almost midnight on a Thursday, and the nearby Starbucks has long since turned its chairs upside-down on the tables and locked up for the night. But at the newest cafe on Palo Alto's California Street, Black Pearl, if you want to lounge on one of the black leather couches, you might have to ask someone to move over.

On one couch sits Christa Demeke, 26, who is sipping the cafe's most popular drink -- taro pearl milk tea. It's pale purple, and sitting on the bottom are what look like black marbles. "We're the pearl milk tea fan club," says Demeke, who comes by a couple times a week for late-night study sessions. "I love it -- it's a special treat, like dessert."

This Taiwanese import, which used to be found only in Asian specialty stores like Ranch 99, is now winning over the cappuccino and chai crowd. Pearl milk tea, also known as bubble tea, is a unique beverage experience -- it's kind of like drinking Thai iced tea and eating Gummi Bears at the same time. The milky black tea is often flavored with something like taro or mango. And spheres of chewy black tapioca wait to be slurped up through an enormous straw.

It's a mouthful of entertainment.

"If (pearl milk tea) were hot, it would be British and I would be sitting here talking in an accent," says Hamilton Tran, 27, one of Demeke's friends. "But it's cold and sugary, and has these pearls -- it's fun."

Since the late 1990s, close to 1,000 pearl milk establishments are estimated to have opened in the United States. In the Bay Area, a recent mini- boomlet has introduced a new kind of cafe culture to the Peninsula.

Strolling around downtown Mountain View, you can get a good indication of how trendy pearl milk tea has become. From the corner of Villa and Castro Street, there are four establishments within a block of each other. In the past six months, Lucy's Tea Shop and Verde have been joined by Tea Era and Tapioca Express.

On a recent afternoon, Verde was packed with young Asians standing in line. The atmosphere was peppy; the walls are bright lime, the stylish stainless- steel tables were packed closely together, and cheerful Asian pop music mingled with the sound of blenders and other drink machinery. Two Asian guys, one with long bleached blond hair, sat at the counter, putting together the plastic pieces of a Toyota Celica model toy.

The ambience agrees with Peter Godden of Mountain View, 19, one of the few white guys in the cafe. He's playing Othello with his buddy Steve Lai, also 19.

"It's a different scene, a different environment," says Godden. "Do you ever see board games like this? People in coffee shops are serious and don't smile."

Verde supplies board games and stacks of Asian magazines. "When there's nothing to do, it's the first place that comes to mind," says Lai. "It's a cool place to chill."

Pearl milk tea got its start in the early 1980s, when an enterprising street vendor in Taiwan added tapioca pearls to his drinks. Today, the drink is as ubiquitous as soda, and the tea shops are practically on every street corner. They've become a major social gathering place for the younger set, from middle-school to college-age kids.

"In Taiwan, parents are not so comfortable with their kids going to KTV (karaoke bars) and other dimly lit places," said Laura Lin, the marketing director for Tapioca Express, the first pearl milk tea franchise in the United States.

Alex Rosten has never been to Taiwan, but one of the reasons the 23-year- old Stanford grad decided to open Black Pearl was to create an after-hours place for students. "When I was an undergrad I hated that there was no place to hang out," he says. "Everything closes at 10 p.m. and, if you're under 21, there's no place to go except for doughnuts and Denny's." On most weekdays, Black Pearl stays open until 1 a.m.; on the weekends, until 2 a.m.

Over at Tea Era, owner Danny Han has noticed how his clientele includes businesspeople, not just the young Asian crowd. He's hoping to win over more non-Asian customers by steering them toward a specific flavor. The sign in his shop reads: "Special Recommendation: Roasted Barley Milk Tea." It may not sound like a hit, but Han says it's their best selling drink. "It tastes a little bit like coffee, so lots of Americans like it,' says Han.

The variety of flavors can be mind-boggling. Compared to Baskin-Robbins, most pearl milk tea stores are way ahead when it comes to choice. Tapioca Express, for example, offers plain old tapioca milk tea, plus 147 other drinks.

You can get 20 different flavors of milk tea, but you can also get pearls in a latte, a snow bubble (a sort of fruity milk shake), and even something called honey and egg juice. While some of these drinks sound pretty far out, they're offered in nearly 40 other Tapioca Express stores around the country.

"It's always fun to look at a million different flavors," says Irene Yeh, 20, who likes her pearl milk tea made with green tea. "I look at the board for 20 minutes, even though I always get the same thing."

While the pearls get all the attention, it's the tea that connoisseurs focus on. Ten Ren, a Chinese company that has been producing tea for 50 years, is said by some to have the best pearl milk tea in the area.

Fans will also tell you that eating while drinking requires a little bit of concentration. "If you run out of liquid first, you have to be careful with the pearls," says Raheleh Mansoor, 24, who just graduated from Stanford Law School and is studying for the bar. "Once I was here (at Black Pearl) studying for 11 hours. I had two pearl drinks -- and I choked on both of them. But I keep on coming back for more."

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